Google said on Friday it will disable its search function in Australia if the country’s government proceeds with a media code that would force it and Facebook to pay local media companies for sharing their content.
Australia is on course to pass laws that would make the tech companies negotiate payments with local publishers and broadcasters for content. If they can’t strike a deal, a government-appointed arbitrator will decide the price.
So, newspapers want to be paid for their content.
OK.
So a law is passed telling Google to pay if they use. As in Spain. Google says not thinks and closes Google News Spain. Newspapers pissed off at lost traffic.
Germany tries again and says if you use in the main search engine then you must pay unless publisher agrees not to charge. Google says to be included you must not charge. Newspaper agree traffic is worth more than payments, so all agree not to charge.
Oz tries again. You must pay for clips. Oh, and, also, you can’t not have clips. Google says we’ll not have a search engine in Oz then.
It’s this same old, old, delusion, that something is worth more than someone is willing to pay for it. Newspapers are really sure their output is worth money. Google ain’t so sure. And as it’s Google being asked to pay….
Obviously Australia has sexually transitioned into an incredibly gay petty-authoritarian cyber-nanny state, BUT Google and its fellow techno-oligopolists are nakedly political entities squatting astride the greatest concentration of information control the world has ever seen outside a dystopian novel and use their powers for evil.
So tie me hyper-global-megacorp down, sport.
Google is evil. So let Australia pass this law. Let Google withdraw its search engine.
Google’s main advantage is inertia. People use it because it is there on their screen and they have always used it. Let them be forced to turn to Duckduckgo or the like – and see if Google ever recovers.
They hate us. F*ck ’em. F*ck ’em every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Google is American. Americans are hot on copyright – even to the extent of copyrighting for themselves something that already exists in another country.
Google is a bunch of thieves.
Rich thieves get away with almost anything.
Australia should take the threat at face value, declare all Google employees personae non grata and liable to imprisonment if they try to enter Australian Territory.
Steve & SMFS
Ditto x 10
The Devil was the first Whig and it seems we will never be rid of them.
Struggling to see how Australia will be impacted by a lack of Google search
Seems like a really good experiment. Do it Australia and see what happens
Perhaps an OzSearch will spring up?
Compare and contrast with Google’s capitulation to China
Modern day Australia will not have the balls to do it.
Starfish,
“Perhaps an OzSearch will spring up?”
Well, it won’t, because the same rules will apply to them, and if they see this as too onerous, they won’t go into business.
The newspapers are being entitled fuckers, and they currently have friends in high places. It takes a tiny change to block Google from indexing your website. I’ve done it for drug trial websites. It could be public, but we wanted to avoid accidental hits, and just have people visiting who were told. A couple of lines in a robots.txt file and Google will remove you sharpish.
The fact is, news is pretty low value. You can read a speech from Boris direct from Number 10. And the analysis in most newspapers is often dumb, ill-informed. You can read smarter analysis elsewhere, so again, what’s the value. You just have to look at how many women are now in journalism. They all think they’ve really achieved something, broken glass ceilings, when the truth is that most men aren’t interested. The men are generally activists, gay or both.
I guess google is banking on enough people in .oz using VPNs already to get around geographical restrictions that they’ll just go to google.com and try to bypass government firewalls.
There are MUCH bigger problems with Google than the spat over charging for news aggregation….
Yes, there’s much wrong with Google.
But this issue is just another example of stupid politicians thinking they have the power to compel obedience from reality.
Reality says “Screw You, Blue!” and walks away.
The problem is the politicians never learn their limits, or the entirely predictable reactions of others to their ill-informed actions.
Forever trying to set prices, repeal the law of supply and demand. Our local lot are busy repealing the laws of thermodynamics and will run power stations on hot air, and charge electric car batteries from other batteries. Oh, and heat houses with recycled ash from burning hydrogen, turned back into hydrogen from the ash (water) by Princess Nut Nut’s fiat.
I must write to my MP: Dear Sir, the law of gravity is such an inconvenience: please repeal it.
with the relationship between google and newspapers surely the question is who is the customer and who is the supplier. What I don’t get is what this has to do with government.
@Bloke in Wales
“try to bypass government firewalls”
Australia v Google , I can’t wait.
Government should stop pussyfooting around. If The People want to be banned from doing certain actions, go ahead and damn well do it.
To Hell with them both.
Google are scum & so is Oz govt.
Indeed Aus/Canada and NZ are run by real offal at present. Which is a good reason to forget about this “Canzuck” crap being hyped. Canzuck? –WILL fucking zuck you can be sure if we make alliances with a pack of police state dross. Turdeau/Jacaranda Vagina-Dentata/ and the whole cast of Aussie scumbags esp the Jug-Eared Cunt in Victoria need to be booted.
As of course does Johnson. If only the Anglo-Sphere had any leaders with the brains and balls of a gnat even.
Trump needs a new job. King of Canzuck? His power base would still be 2nd 11 but USA under China Joe is on a downbound train. It would be an interesting duel. Trump as leader of Canzuick vs CCP owned USA. With a vast 5th column of Trump supporters working against China Joe.
Can we be sure that politicians really want to do this and aren’t just performing for their paymasters or other noisy factions? They must have been told what’s happened elsewhere.
When it fails as a policy they can go back, shrug their shoulders, and say they tried.
They’re just performing, and they really want to do this…
Buck the media too hard, and a little “Investigative Journalism” will find something, even if it’s not directly connected to the contrary politician, even if we have that rare bird: a politician with clean laundry.
Ozzy press is as gutterish as you can make it, and there’s a lot of smoke fire Aunties…
Popcorn-worthy… Ancient dinosaur trying to milk Baphomet’s tits… 😉
Google and FB would sooner consider BuzzFeed and The Guardian “reliable sources” than pay a penny for intellectual property.
The only two things that can truly rein in the unchecked power of tech companies are:
1. The government enacting and/or enforcing the laws all other industries have to operate under (e.g., updating Section 230)
2. Better tech companies cropping up and taking away Big Tech’s influence
The days of Silicon Valley control are numbered. We just don’t yet know what that number is:
Well, it won’t, because the same rules will apply to them, and if they see this as too onerous, they won’t go into business.
I’d put money on this not being true, depending on “too onerous” being more than simply having to pay.
China has massive restrictions on its internet, shutting out the likes of Google. That has not left them without search engines.
If the Australians go through with this, and I bet they won’t once the public realises the consequences, then we’ll soon see.
I agree ’twill be interesting to see what happens.
I’m sure I’ll be annoyed at the results.
Bloke in North Dorset said:
“Can we be sure that politicians really want to do this …? They must have been told what’s happened elsewhere”
Never under-estimate the ignorance of politicians.
I was amazed when people complained about Trump bullshitting Trudeau over trade deal and feeding him false information.
I was more concerned that the Canadian leader was so crap that Trump, who was just doing his job, could get away with it and knew which one I’d rather have on my side.
Heh… If Google/Facebook really want to, they could easily remove every shred of Ozzie media from their results/channels. While leaving all other webbie stuff of Ozzie nature alone.
Would be funny to see how much Oz media make from the google/facebook “sidechannel” , and how quickly they will backpedal on this one…
Of course, that would also be a sharp example of exactly how much potential influence the Googleplex actually has, and how potentially dangerous their effective monopoly is.
So it’s unlikely they’ll do this, and rather claim “technical difficulties” while blanking out Oz completely.
And have a nice, quiet chat somewhere with the Upstarts, of course..
Seems to me if Google drops Australia, someone else will move in, pay the newspapers as required and raise prices to cover it. Thus, the costs get transferred to the customers, as I think economics would predict. Variations on this theme abound – health insurance must cover X, price goes up.
what’s odd is the difference between Youtube and Google search. A news channel does get ad revenue from its Youtube account views, so why not from search?- ok not hosted by Google maybe is the answer but…another thing is strange. With Google search you can filter on news.i.e. the pre-approved list of newsy type sites. But in you tube search there isn’t this function. Yet if you put anything in now that is or was newsy the mainstream news media now dominate it along with autobot summariser channels. I reckon theres a pre approved list that bunks them up the listings and crowds out various independent channels, who also often get demonetised to boot.
HB
Put something on Youtube and Google will give you a cut of their ad revenue.
A search engine directs traffic to your site, where you can take any ad revenue direct; you can, if you wish, advertise on the search engine to boost the traffic to your site. So it come down to a balance of advantages: without content on youtube there is no audience and no revenue for Google, without the traffic from search engines who has most to loose the content provider or google? If the newspapers were not in the google search who would notice?
DJC- yeah that’s it. and its interesting the contrast.